Biocultural community protocols for livestock keepers
Shared
activity
Collective
decision making
Community
Shared values
Common cause
Defining a “community” (source Natural Justice, 2010a)
munities themselves are too isolated to know about the concept . Guidance by an NGO or
local lawyers will therefore be required. The biases or special interests and backgrounds
of the mediators will be reflected in the process as well as the result of the process (the
written biocultural community protocol).
These mediators bear a great responsibility and must take care not to put words into peoples’
mouth and contribute to stereotypes. Furthermore it is useful and essential that background
research be conducted by the facilitating entity before the process is started. There is need
for outside expert inputs with respect to legal matters.
Biocultural community protocols are part of larger community processes, and as such the
development of a biocultural community protocol should be entirely endogenous. Some
communities may be ready to put information about their management of and interaction
with natural resources and traditional knowledge, challenges, plans for the future of their
biocultural heritage and legal rights into a document, but others may be years away from
that kind of focus. Thus, the development of the protocol should not drive community
processes; community process should feed the articulation of a number of things that then
form a biocultural community protocol.
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